CamBay will host Nunavut addictions pilot treatment program: GN budget

This former student hostel in Cambridge Bay is likely to be the site of a planned 28-day, residential addictions program announced Feb. 22 in the Nunavut budget. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — Nunavut Finance Minister Keith Peterson’s Feb. 22 budget address in the legislature contained a surprise announcement for people in Cambridge Bay: a residential addictions program will move forward in the Kitikmeot community.

“We recognize that addictions are a significant problem, and will launch a pilot treatment program this spring,” said Peterson, who is also the MLA for Cambridge Bay.

Peterson said that, as part of the program, participants from across the Kitikmeot region will receive 28 days of residential care.

The plan is to use an existing building in Cambridge Bay — likely an empty hostel building, where a similar, one-time program for women took place in 2005.

The health and social services department’s mental health and addictions division will support the program, Peterson said.

“The program will include family counselling, education and follow-up — services that, although badly needed, are not available now. If the program succeeds, we will take it into more communities,” Peterson said. “I am looking forward to the results. Drugs, alcohol and gambling are leading contributors to our social problems. They deny opportunities for Nunavummiut to lead healthy, rewarding lives. We need this addictions program to make a real difference.”

In response to a request for proposals for two addictions and healing centres, published by the GN early in 2011, the Hamlet of Cambridge Bay delivered a detailed 55-page proposal for a 28-day residential program, which included letters of support from the RCMP and the GN’s justice department.

The hamlet’s wellness centre would deliver the program.

According to RFP 2011-1, the centre was to treat both adults and youth “who have significant mental health [problems] and/or addictions.”

Programming at the centre was to contain an emphasis on “culturally specific activities, including Inuit values, teaching from elders, and land program elements.”

According to the RFP, programming would also include talk therapy and stress abstinence from drugs or alcohol, if possible, and harm reduction, if not.

The centre would also to teach people life skills such as budgeting, resumé writing and cooking.

That RFP ended up “on hold.”

Then, Nunavut’s health minister, Tagak Curley, confirmed last June in the Nunavut legislature that plans to open two addictions treatment and healing centres in Nunavut would be delayed, and this was the last anyone in Cambridge Bay — at least in the wellness centre or at the hamlet — heard about any addictions program in the community until Feb. 22.

Acting senior administrative officer Sterling Firlotte said he was sure that the announcement of the addictions pilot treatment program would be welcomed in Cambridge Bay.

But Firlotte had no idea what role or involvement the hamlet-run wellness centre, which runs numerous healing programs in the community, would play.

The last treatment centre to be located in Nunavut was the Inusiqsiuqvik treatment centre in Apex, which operated between 1991 and December 1998.

That centre fizzled because few clients used it, causing funding problems for the board that operated it.

The old Inusiqsiuqvik building now houses the Qimaavik women’s shelter.

As for the former student hostel in Cambridge Bay, it appears to be in fairly good shape — at least from the outside.

The GN’s 2004-05 capital budget included $500,000 to revamp and renovate the building into a patient residence.